


The Heroes of Kvatch

by nostalgic_breton_girl



Category: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Genre: Gen, Kvatch, Oblivion Gate, hero of kvatch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25574746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgic_breton_girl/pseuds/nostalgic_breton_girl
Summary: There was not one Hero of Kvatch, but several: the surviving guards, Arch-Mage Julianne Traven, and - quite without realising his part to come in the story - Brother Martin. They are met later by Corinne, a Blade, who asks that they narrate their experiences within the Oblivion Gate.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	The Heroes of Kvatch

‘What was it like... when you went to close the Gate?’

To those about us, the question perhaps seemed tactless: of those who had been in the Gate and survived, there was not a soul who had not been profoundly affected by it; and when I looked over at Martin, who had overheard, I saw that he fought internally, that he did not know if he would want to discuss it, had the question been put to him.

The question was tactless, to those who did not know Corinne’s way of doing things, or the relationship which I shared with her as my sister. Certainly we had not made any mention of the Gate, or anything about Kvatch, the entire way to Bruma; but I knew she had discerned my silence, and the torment which raged beneath it; she knew that I must _talk_ , lest I erupt. If I was to suffer the aftershocks of Kvatch, it must not be in silence. And hence the question.

‘On the plains of Oblivion, you mean?...’

My tone bordered on the academic. Perhaps I ought to continue coolly, as if I were back at the University, and giving a lecture: my already-faded memories lent themselves to it, I took a step back from them.

‘You saw the Gate from the outside: fire within rugged stone... it seemed at once natural and unnatural, it should not have been there, but it did not seem _created_. That, I think, is how the Deadlands felt... they were wrong, hideously wrong, and yet...

‘When we went through the portal, we saw on the other side a vast expanse, which upon close inspection was for the most part lava, in an sea beyond the horizon. Ha! I should not compare it to the sea. When you stand on the cliffs at Anvil, the sea seems wondrous and beautiful. This sea was not beautiful, and though it went on forever, it... it seemed to have limits nonetheless, limits which held us in, it was all-encompassing...

‘I know the Daedra are fond of tricks, and confusion, and paradox, but I was not prepared for a Daedric realm.

‘It was like standing in some horrible nightmare, except that we felt most painfully the heat in the air, and the volcanic ground like shards of glass beneath our feet. It’s a wonder I can remember it at all: it certainly seems like a nightmare now...

‘And if we hadn’t all been named Heroes of Kvatch, and if Martin were not here to vouch for my memories, I would not believe it had happened at all.’

A false start; I swallowed, and though the sheer will to talk clutched at me, I could not find the words to sate it. I had spoken softly, and without intending eavesdroppers, but across the room Martin had looked up a little from his book, had taken on the expression of a man recalling horrors, and trying to hide it.

‘I think the soldiers did far worse than I did, or Martin, despite their concern for us. They shuffled in their armour, and cast off their helmets, and their gauntlets, and though they did not remove their very cuirasses, it was quite evident that they were uncomfortable, indeed I feared they might boil alive, if we were not careful. We had a little tactic planned, a proper little army, I suppose: swordsmen at the front, archers beyond, and us mages at the wings and flanked by soldiers. That was how we fought the creatures which assailed us. They were many, but not too many at first, it was not like the streets of Kvatch had been...

‘Some thought it a reassurance; I thought it ominous.

‘They are difficult to kill, certainly, the Daedra: but they have weaknesses, and one learns these weaknesses quickly. – Oh! I would like to say that we did well, fighting the first waves, but... we lost soldiers, even early on, and that was discouraging, we did not have all that many of us to start with.’

I sighed, and Corinne likewise – I in the memory of lost soldiers, she no doubt in the regret, the regret that she had not been there earlier, that Kvatch had fallen, that she might have prevented it, _if only she could have saved the Emperor_ –

My struggles were nought compared with hers, and I had seen Oblivion!

The thought halted my speech, and I could do nothing, save reach over, and take her hand, where it had fallen into her lap. She clasped it, sighed again.

‘Oh!’ she said: ‘but look at you, I wish you had not gone in.’

‘We should not have survived if she had not been there,’ said Martin, unexpectedly, from across the room.

‘All of those who went were necessary,’ said I: ‘we were far from a full strength, it is quite remarkable we had all the forces we did, and we needed them all. I regret that any of us had to go in, certainly I do, but...’

What was past, was past.

What was past, was past, and yet my mind could not escape it, and yet I must _speak_ , I must narrate, I must heap my story upon Corinne; she clasped my hand more tightly, and with a look bade me continue.

‘It... was not as simple as it first seemed.

‘Of course it wasn’t: it was a Daedric realm.

‘We knew we had to find whatever was maintaining the bridge: Martin had reckoned on a sigil stone, it could scarcely be anything but, and our money was on the great silhouette of a tower, in the middle distance. There were cliffs between, and great bundles of some horrid plant, but there was a path, if ill-defined, and we were following it, and it seemed as if we had the right idea.

‘It seemed as if we had the right idea, for all of a minute: and then the path became infinite, the tower seemed to shift to the horizon, the lava seemed encroaching, and the heat became unbearable.

‘I must have expressed my thoughts aloud, because those at my side said I must be suffering the heat, that I saw wrongly. And I might have believed them... Gods, the heat... I was stifled, and had not quite realised it: I was hardly sweating, but there was a scratching pain in my throat, and I was exhausted, and my head was spinning. I might have believed them, then, but the word spread among the soldiers, and I learnt that my experience was not unique.

‘We faced another skirmish; and then one of the men cried aloud, said that it was hopeless, that there were too many of them, that the tower was too far away; and what if the stone was not there? and what if it was, but it was not the way out? and what if there was no way of closing the Gate? Gods, this was a Daedric prince we were dealing with! – what if all this destruction was inevitable, the natural order of things, what if we were not scared of the Gate, or of the chaos, but of _change_?

‘Outside of the Deadlands, one might have said he was raving.

‘Inside the Deadlands, one could quite understand his sentiment...

‘What if it _was_ hopeless?

‘We were all tired, of course we were tired: we had spent the night defending Kvatch, we were the stragglers, we were those who had by some miracle survived, and we thought we could fight the forces of Oblivion!

‘The sentiment of the poor hopeless man spread among the soldiers; I did not escape it myself... And those who did not see the tower as further away, yet saw the circumstances as something more than they were willing to face...’

I broke off, glanced over at Martin.

The poor priest took in a deep breath, and attempting the eloquence which might befit an Emperor said:

’I saw it as the culmination of what I had felt overnight. I have frequently been overwhelmed by the Divines, overawed by Akatosh, but I have never felt so small and so crushed as I did at that moment. I had felt abandoned by the gods, which is one thing; now I felt entirely at the whim of the Daedra, which is quite another. I felt as if Dagon were mocking us: we might close this Gate, but could we close them all? We might resist the destruction and overturning of all we knew, but what were we really, against such forces?’

‘Put simply,’ said I: ‘had we bitten off more than we could chew?’

‘And yet you survived,’ Corinne mused.

‘Survived, because of Julianne,’ said Martin at once, before I attempted to deny it.

I still attempted to deny it, floundered, let Martin explain.

‘There’s quite some passion in your sister,’ he said: ‘she recovered quicker than anyone from her despair, and started insisting that anything was possible, if one but put one’s mind to it.’

‘Oh!’ said Corinne: and despite everything I perceived a mischievous smile lingering at the edge of her features. ‘That is _quintessentially_ Julianne.’

‘She said that we must fight this hopelessness; that we had survived Kvatch, and so we could survive this. To those who saw the tower as far away, she said she saw the same, but that she did not believe whatever mirage Dagon was forcing us to experience. To those of us who thought ourselves abandoned by the gods, she said that one is not truly lost until one has abandoned oneself. I... I must say, I protested that if this were our fate, then it were our fate...’

His mouth twitched.

‘If I had known then that my fate were to be Emperor... I do not know if I would have gone forth more confidently even than I did... or if I would have fled the responsibility.’

‘I told him that he was being unreasonable,’ said I at last: ‘and I know it is a difficult lesson to take on, to those who believe themselves driven by fate... Rather, I wondered if I was foolish, for always having been optimistic, but I didn’t lose my optimism, even in the realm of Mehrunes Dagon, I do not know how I did it, but I did know I didn’t want to remain a second longer there, and that our promise of a way out lay within visible reach. That... that was what we had, and I clutched it.

‘The Daedra stormed with more force upon us, as we approached the tower; I suppose Dagon knew that we had once defied his tyranny, and determined to challenge us again, with physical as well as mental hopelessness. We... we lost more soldiers, before the tower; we were a much-diminished army, even before we entered it; but we had reached it.

‘That was the most miraculous thing. It had been closer, much closer than any of us had assumed. We had thought it an age away; that thought had discouraged us; but the displacement of that discouragement had rendered it closer. I do not know how the Deadlands work. I do not know if the land was responding to our sentiments, or if our sentiments were merely fluctuating even as the land did, but I found it quite reassuring, that in our defiance of the forces of inevitability, we might be granted our ambition with greater ease than anticipated. _I_ was optimistic, anyway, at long last.

‘The tower was a maze, certainly, and we met with more creatures, more daedric spawn. Some had pursued us to the tower, and now came up behind us, too, and caught us in the corridors: but we could see the stone! and we were close to it, to the way out, and the closing of the Gate!

‘When we came to the final level – oh! it was horrid, the radiant heat from the sigil-tower was worse than anything we had met with – and the walkways were – I believe they were flesh –’

I shuddered, and Martin took up the narration.

‘Julianne had made a bid for the stone, while the soldiers held back the creatures. I had been at the rear of our impromptu army, and so could not follow. The creatures were frenzied now: Divines, you have never seen such fury... such hopeless fury as theirs. Now _they_ were hopeless: we were close to victory.’

‘I knew the stone would be hot, unbearably hot,’ said I: ‘and so I summoned a pair of daedric gauntlets... oh! the irony!... and I cast a resistance spell, and went for the stone, and pulled it from its pedestal.

‘I don’t remember a lot after that...’

‘The tower collapsed, in a mire of flame,’ said Martin: ‘not the tower – our perception of the tower. I had put a lot of store in the fact that, with the limen removed, anything not of the Oblivion realm would be cast back to its own realm, and vice versa. For a horrible moment, I feared I was wrong... But had we not all gone into the Gate with the full knowledge that we might not come out?

‘But we were transported back to where the Gate had been, flung out, and the soldiers ran to their fellows on the other side, and I found Julianne...’

‘Lying on the ground still clutching the sigil stone, and sobbing, and quite forgetting that my gauntlets would not last forever,’ said I.

‘That is when you arrived,’ said Martin: ‘you know the rest.’

Corinne drew a breath. ‘I was _prodigiously_ late.’

‘You had quite another mission,’ I said at once, ‘and no less important.’

She leaned back, sighed once more. ‘I... I am glad you have had the confidence to tell me about it. I fear I shall not be without experience of the forces of Oblivion, before this is all over... But I do not envy you what you went through. It was less than you deserved, all of you, to be named Heroes.’

And at last she ventured forth, and pulled me into an embrace.

‘Oh! Corinne,’ said I: ‘I believe that narration has done me the _world_ of good.’

I felt her smile, over my shoulder.

‘And I think... there have been horrors, and I shall not forget them, and I do not know if I shall recover, but... it’s possible, it’s possible, we can do this, we can defeat whatever dark shadow is over Cyrodiil. I know, because I faced that shadow, and won, and – oh, Corinne, we can do it, we must!’


End file.
